Despite Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Apology, Chicago Lawmakers Introduce Recall Bill

While Emanuel apologized for balking at releasing the McDonald shooting footage, a federal judge nearby declined to make public surveillance videos of another police shooting, this one involving 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman in 2013. The protesters want him to resign, but we’ll see if he does.

Another alderman, Leslie Hairston, who is black, said she was particularly struck by the mayor’s talk of unequal treatment because she was initially denied entrance to the council chamber Wednesday, while white colleagues went straight through without showing ID.

Sharon Fairley, the new head of the city’s Independent Police Review Authority, said it was important for “public confidence” that the inspector general get involved.

A recent poll which showed 51 percent of voters say the mayor should step down is indicative of his sinking popularity, but ThinkProgress said Emanuel refuses to step down.

The group dissipated to a few hundred folks during the evening when they took their rally to the Chicago Police Department Headquarters on the city’s south side.

Undermining his argument even further were accusations that the police allegedly destroyed evidence by trying to delete footage of the shooting from security cameras at a nearby Burger King.

Alvarez, in the midst of a tough re-election fight, dis-missed claims by Oppenheimer that a gun had been planted by Chicago police at the scene, saying it was unsupported by the evidence. If we’re also going to begin the healing process… the first step in that journey is my step.

But he acknowledged Wednesday that he should have challenged the city’s longstanding practice of withholding the shooting video to avoid compromising an ongoing criminal investigation that dragged on for 13 months until Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder. They also called for Cook County’s State Attorney, Anita Alvarez, to step down.

Addressing the police force, Emanuel said, “We can not ask citizens in crime-ravaged neighborhoods to break the code of silence if we continue to let a code of silence exist in our own police department”. “This is the people’s house – this is not Rahm Emanuel’s house”.

“Rahm Emanuel was surprised by some of things happening in the city”, he told MSNBC Thursday, “and you can’t be surprised in your second term as a mayor”.

At 2 p.m., a press conference is set to be held outside Chicago Police Headquarters with former employees from the Independent Police Review Authority who say they were fired for not justifying police shootings.

Just as it had in McDonald’s shooting, the city had argued in court filings since the shooting 14 months ago that releasing the video would inflame the public and jeopardize the officer’s right to a fair trial if he was charged, court records show. “I have shown everyone in this room what we have done”, Alvarez said in response to a reporter’s question. The problems have led to intervention by the U.S. Department of Justice, which announced a far-reaching civil rights investigation of the department this week.

Dorothy Holmes, mother of Ronald Johnson, told protesters she didn’t accept Emanuel’s apology or “fake (expletive) tears”.

This includes tackling issues related to poverty, opportunity and family, as well as law enforcement’s relationship with its citizens, he said.

“I own it… It happened on my watch”, the mayor said during an emotion-filled address. The video was only recently released after a lawsuit.

But David Beltran, a Chicago musician, jumped in with the idea to turn the fake Facebook event – something Brown admits she creates quite often – into an actual planned protest.